The guesswork comes in finding the right piece of crystal. First [KOS] broke it into tiny pieces, then he started poking the chunks with electrified probes to see if he could get some light out of them. Once an active area was found he needed a base for the crystal. The image above shows the two nails which he used. This provides a large mounting area that also acts as a heat sink to make sure the LED won’t burn itself out. There’s a solder blob which he kept molten with his iron until the crystal could be pushed into place. That holds it securely as the pin which serves as the cathode is positioned.

The whole setup is soldered to some protoboard and is ready to use. This is the second time we remember seeing this technique used to fabricate LEDS. The first time was an accident.

16 thoughts on “Homemade Silicon Carbide LED”

Back in old days, before the advent of packaged semiconductor diodes, your typical radio detector (diode) consisted of some kind of a metallic crystal (often galena) and a metallic probe or “whisker.” The point of the whisker against certain spots on the crystal formed a PN junction.

Galena makes for a good radio detector, put the whisker pressure on the crystal is very slight, which means that the detector as a whole is sensitive to mechanical vibration. This is a disadvantage on shipboard or in a portable radio set, for example.

Silicon carbide is not quite as touchy as galena, and promised to be a better detector for shipboard use, except for one thing: The forward voltage drop was much higher than that of galena. In radio terms this meant that the crystal was far less sensitive to weak radio signals.

To combat this, experimenters used a battery and a pot to apply a forward bias to the junction…in order to push it to the almost-but-not-quite-on condition. A weak signal superimposed on this bias could then be detected.

The fact that a DC voltage was applied a silicon carbide crystal meant that the discovery of the first LED was inevitable. In fact, there are articles from the the early 1900’s in which experimenters report seeing glowing specks of light on their carbide crystals. I think lab-documented electroluminescence goes back as far as 1907.

Of course, nobody had yet conceived of a light-emitting diode, so there was considerable debate as to what mechanism was responsible for the light. Some thought the light was the product of microscopic arcs. Others, rightfully so, suggested that the light was being generated by an as-yet unknown process.

Hm… well a quick search for ‘silicon carbide’ on Home Depot turns up a wide range of grinding bits and sandpaper. Not sure if you’ll find anything of the purity required. Perhaps individual grains from the sandpaper? As for blades, it seems those are tungsten carbide.

Well, this was my initial thought, but you have to ensure that the two suports are insulated or else you will have a shortcircuit.
If one had an expensive wire bonding machine he could evem make it inside a transistor package as well :)

not exactly , what you do is add the aluminium while producing as SiC has a very high melting point,
just add clay ( aluninium silicate) to graphite (coke, charcoal,diamonds or any other carbon source), abd heat them in a steel crucible. Although i dont have enough time to explain this chemically, it should work